Experiencing China — Tsinghua University (Part 1: Prelude)
I got an opportunity (and a full scholarship) to visit Tsinghua University, Beijing for about a fortnight starting 16th July 2017, for its flagship Summer School program called ‘Experiencing China’.
While most summer schools are thought of as sinecure, this experiential learning program, designed to sharpen global vision and to explore various aspects of China, was anything but. The summer school was meticulously planned, loaded with rigourous academic, entrepreneurial, cultural & social activities and saw participation of about 200 erudite students, many from the best universities in the world (Oxford, Cambridge, UPenn, JHU etc.).
This and the parts that’ll follow are a very comprehensive and personal report of this wonderful and enlightening experience, one I’ll cherish for years to come.
About Tsinghua
Tsinghua University is located in Beijing, China.
It is consistently ranked as one of the top academic institutions in China and Asia. Infact, in 2017, Tsinghua University topped MIT and became the best engineering school in the world, according to US News.
Tsinghua is regarded as the most reputable Chinese university by Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings (2017) where it was ranked 14th globally.
It is often called “China’s MIT” and is renowned as one of the country’s top schools for studying engineering and sciences. The current President of China, XI Jinping is an alumnus of Tsinghua University. Tsinghua also has two Nobel Prize winners to its name.
Tsinghua has a very green and gigantic campus (around a 1000 acres) with nearly 50,000 students.
I’m a vegetarian.
As vegetarian as it gets.
I had always imagined China to be a difficult place for vegetarians. I knew people there ate almost everything that moves, from scorpions to snakes to crocodiles to dogs to insects to worms to … you get the gist. Nonetheless, I was somewhat sure of my ability to hoard and scavenge vegetarian food; survive on the limited packed food, khakhra and matthi that I could carry along.
When confronted by family members and friends about this issue, I debated my way through, saying it’s just a couple of weeks.
That was a rookie miscalculation.
Star that email!
The International Relations Department of my university (VIT) had shared an email about a Deep Learning Summer School at Tsinghua way back, towards the end of 2016. I had starred the email back then and left the application form for later. As luck would have it, just a day before the deadline in May, I came across that starred email. I applied immediately without much thinking or planning.
A few days later, I received a reply from them, asking me to consider the Experiencing China program since all the seats in the Deep Learning Summer School were already full. And I did that…
The program offered scholarships to selected candidates, covering the tuition fees, food, weekend sight-seeing and accommodation. The online application consisted of academic transcripts, English proficiency test scores, CV, SOP and a couple of short essay questions.
It was during my first week of summer internship at Siemens Ltd. in New Delhi when I received the acceptance email from Tsinghua. To add to that, there was the scholarship offer. It’s difficult to express how elated I was, specially taking into account how anxious I had been towards the end of the last semester, since my plans for the summer were very foggy. None of that mattered anymore though. I was able to land an internship, plus a prestigious summer school program.
To go or not to go…
A couple of weeks before my departure dates, India & China started what-would-be an increasingly intense and disruptive military standoff in Doklam. I was yet to apply for my Chinese Visa. At this point, almost everyone around me rejected the idea of my going to China. They had a strong case:
Sensitive bilateral situation. Vegetarian. Miss 3 weeks of college and most importantly, miss a major chunk of the placements season.
I have to admit, I was confused.
However, when propositions come with an uncertainty, as a matter of principle, taking a decision yourself has one strong advantage. That way, there is no one to blame except yourself if anything goes wrong, thus making you a lot more responsible for your experience.
Instinctively, I decided against what others told me. Even though my father wasn’t very keen on it, I defended my decision to go.
Life had been somewhat monotonic for a couple of years and I wanted something new.
你好 (Nǐ hǎo)
My trip started with a rather uncomfortable overnight flight. I almost pledged never to fly with China Eastern again, except I realized I had my return flight with the same carrier. There were no personal screens, a complete ban on mobile phone usage during the flight (even in airplane mode) and suspicious vegetarian food. Lesson learnt: last minute international flight bookings aren’t a smart thing to do.
After a stopover in Shanghai, I boarded my flight to Beijing. This flight was somewhat better. I interacted with a Ford engineer who had closely worked on the EcoSport project. He had visited India a couple of times, spoke fluent English and had interesting insights on India & China. My conversation with him helped me gauge the Chinese public opinion about Tsinghua.
He said it was the ‘Chinese Dream School’ and I could sense a different kind of respect for me, the moment I told him I was going to study at Tsinghua.
Touchdown Beijing, and we had an unpleasant surprise waiting for us. Even though our plane landed on time, there was no bus available to take us from the plane to the terminal. Eventually, there was a 45-min delay before we could get off the plane. The air traffic control is quite congested and maybe even mismanaged in Beijing. I faced a similar delay on my return flight, wherein after everyone boarded, the flight got delayed by almost 2 hours. We were served the meals in a stationary plane.
By the end of this trip, there dawned a previously undiscovered respect for Indian air traffic control systems.
On multiple occasions that were to follow, I found value in many things Indian that usually go unnoticed.
I guess that’s what going away from home can do to you — make you value home even more.
Chance Encounters
Finding my way out of Terminal 2 at the Beijing Airport, I was mildly paranoid of what was to follow. I had to take a shuttle bus to Terminal 3, where I’d find the Tsinghua volunteers.
In most countries, this would be an easy task. It’s different in China. Most people don’t understand English. Most signboards have only hànzì scribbled on them. Most apps don’t work (no Google, no Whatsapp, no Facebook, no Snapchat & the list goes on).
I located the shuttle bus eventually with the help of English speaking Airport staff. Right beside me on the bus, was an Indian girl. After an initial reluctance, we started talking, only to realize we were going for the same program. Now if that wasn’t enough to reduce my paranoia, Saloni said she had been studying Chinese for the past 5 years. While in China, knowing someone who can translate for you is a boon like no other. In hindsight, had I not met her, the trip would have been way more difficult and less fun. We wouldn’t have gone roaming on the streets of Beijing as fearlessly as we did, if it wasn’t for her.
Nonetheless, 5 years of studying Chinese can still not solve all your troubles. Saloni and I were stranded at T3 for quite some time as we couldn’t find our meeting point. Saloni tried her best to ask for directions but it wasn’t really working out. Eventually, we realised we had been dropped by the shuttle bus on the departure terminal instead of the arrival terminal. It would have been a pretty rough start had I been lost alone at the Airport.
This chance encounter would prove to be highly beneficial as it helped us meet more Indian friends (some of the most talented achievers I’ve met till date), who were like family by the end of trip.
We are all palimpsests of the various experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve we’ve met, the places we’ve been to… My summer at Tsinghua was going to alter the fabric of certain approaches I had towards life, in ways I’m yet to decipher completely.
A new journey had begun…
Stay tuned for Part 2 that traces my journey and experiences during the “Summer of China”…
